Generations
by civilwarrose
Summary: Ponyboy is a now a grandfather. It's been 50 years and his grandson, Wyatt, is fourteen. The two spend time bonding together. A look at scenes of Ponyboy's life in modern times with his family.


**Chapter 1- Stay Gold**

**The Outsiders and the characters Ponyboy, Johnny, Sodapop and Dally are the creations of S.E. Hinton.**

* * *

Ponyboy Curtis and his grandson, Wyatt Curtis, were looking at the exhibits of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum. Wyatt was fourteen, slight and brown-haired. He talked of nothing lately but his hope to learn to fly a plane. His ultimate dream was joining the Air Force and becoming a fighter jet pilot.

"Grampa! Check it out! An F-14 Tomcat. It must have been awesome to fly those things," he commented.

"Must be," Ponyboy replied, with a smile. "After this, you want to get a bite to eat and take a little drive before you get home?"

"Sure. Pizza sound okay?"

"Yep."

The sixty-four year old man and the boy ate lunch at Sammy's Pizzeria in north Tulsa, talking about everything and anything. Baseball, school, girls (Wyatt insisted he didn't like _anyone_), and poking fun at Wyatt's dad, Johnny- who was Ponyboy's son. Johnny, at forty-two, was a firefighter. He and his wife Jessie had built a nice life together in Collinsville, a short drive away from Ponyboy and Cherry's home in Owasso. Wyatt was Johnny and Jessie's firstborn. They also had a daughter, little Lila who was five. Ponyboy and Cherry loved their grandkids more than life itself.

After lunch, Ponyboy decided to take Wyatt to see the old neighborhood. As he drove, he frowned. The only things the same were the names of the streets. It would be fifty years ago this month. Fifty damn years.

"This was where it all happened, huh?" Wyatt said as they parked near a mall.

"Yeah."

"What cemetery is Johnny and Dally buried at?" Wyatt was asking the question quietly and reverently, and it seemed like he had been preparing himself to ask it for a long time.

"Memorial Park."

The boy nodded, his head down. He looked back over at his grandfather.

"Can we go see them?"

"Are you sure, Wyatt? It's a school night. I don't want to get in trouble with your dad now."

"Yeah I'm sure."

Ponyboy began driving again. He fiddled with the radio, flipping channels every few seconds. The song "Gloria" by Van Morrison's band Them was on. Ponyboy's eyes stung and the road went blurry; he blinked. Of all the songs to be playing on the goddamn radio.

He parked his midnight blue Ford Ranger by the gate. Ponyboy and Wyatt began to walk in the warm autumn sunshine, and they were soon shaded by tall oaks and maples painted gold and crimson. The leaves fluttered above their heads as they strolled over rows and rows of headstones.

Ponyboy decided to stop at the caretaker's office for a moment to get a map. He wouldn't have any idea where to find them otherwise. It had been a long time since he'd been there, he thought guiltily.

They passed the more recent plots, then walked through the veterans' section with its hundreds of identical white crosses, a small flag fluttering near each. Finally they came to the older section. The graves here were simple. The oldest graves were small stone obelisks dating back to the 1800s. Some were tilted and cracked over the centuries. Ponyboy studied the map, and he remembered that they were somewhere near the white statue of Jesus. He eventually found the statue, and after circling around for a few minutes reading names, he stopped and gazed down at one simple, flat rectangular headstone.

**Dallas Winston**

**1947-1965**

Wyatt came over quickly and looked down. "Dally," he said quietly. Then the boy bent down to pick something up. "Hey, someone's littering!"

"Wait, Wyatt. What was that you just picked up?" Ponyboy said curiously.

"Just a bottle cap. Wish people wouldn't litter by the graves."

"Can I see it?" the older man asked.

Wyatt handed his grandfather the bottle cap. Ponyboy looked closely at it. It was from a bottle of Coke. He started to smile. "This wasn't littering, Wyatt. It was a gift to Dally. I know who put it here."

"A pop bottle cap? Pop bottle..Sodapop! Uncle Soda was here!"

Wyatt laughed a little. Ponyboy turned the cap around and inside, the name DALLY was written in block letters in permanent marker, in Sodapop's writing.

He set it back down near the stone, and pressed it firmly into the soil. He stood up, remembering Dally, the way he tried to flirt with Cherry at the drive-in that night. He recalled the way she had thrown a bottle of Coke in his face, rejecting him because of his aggressiveness. He wondered if it was any consolation to Dally that Cherry fell in love with Ponyboy years later. She wasn't like all the other Socs. She could see people beyond social class, and when she and Ponyboy ran into each other when they were both going to the University of Tulsa, she knew there was much more to him than just being a Greaser.

Ponyboy had written some poems in school and won a national creative writing contest his senior year. The grand prize was a scholarship. He was able to go to college, unlike any other member of the Curtis family. He majored in journalism, and during college he courted Cherry, marrying her in 1971 when he was only twenty. Later, Ponyboy worked as a newspaper reporter and magazine article writer for many years. He had just retired this year, and was now beginning to write his own book.

He stared down at Dally's name, and the years on the headstone. Such a short life. He started to weep quietly.

Wyatt stood near him and put his hand on his shoulder in comfort.

"He's in a good place, Grampa."

"He is."

Ponyboy wished he could give a little gift or trinket to Dally just like his brother must have done recently. He said a little prayer for him; hoping that he was happy and he was in a beautiful place, and that Johnny Cade was with him.

He walked on, and only a few minutes later, they found it.

**John Thomas Cade**

Ponyboy felt the tears streaming down his aged cheeks. He saw Wyatt bend down closer and point to a small Coke bottle cap set firmly in the ground right beside the headstone.

"Uncle Soda was here, too." Wyatt carefully dug out the bottle cap and turned it around, digging out the soil with his finger. He showed it to Ponyboy.

JOHNNY was written in permanent marker on the back. Wyatt pushed it back down into the soil, right where Sodapop had placed it.

They stood there for several moments. Johnny's face was still clear in the aging man's mind. His big brown eyes, his mop of dark hair, his lithe little body that housed a huge, brave soul and a will of iron. He remembered Johnny laughing as he looked at Ponyboy's hair, bleached blond by peroxide during their escape from town.

"You look real tuff," Johnny had said.

The last time Ponyboy had been at this site was about forty-three years ago. Cherry had been at his side, her red hair waist-length, adorned with a hippie-style headband. She was rosy-cheeked and gloriously pregnant.

She had snuggled against his shoulder, sniffling just as he was. She whispered to him that if it was a boy, it _had_ to be Johnny.

A gentle wind stirred the autumn leaves in the cemetery, causing them to dance and swirl along the ground. One single gold leaf settled itself right on top of Johnny's headstone.

Wyatt, standing to his right, noticed the leaf.

"It's gold, Grampa. _Nature's first green is_ _gold_."

_"Her hardest hue to hold_," replied Ponyboy, his voice thick.

Grandfather and grandson spoke the rest of the poem together.

_"Her early leaf's a flower;  
But only so an hour.  
Then leaf subsides to leaf.  
So Eden sank to grief,  
So dawn goes down to day.  
Nothing gold can stay." *_

_..._

_* Nothing Gold Can Stay _by Robert Frost


End file.
